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Business lessons can be found everywhere we look in life. One of the best ways to learn is by simply looking at the world in a new way. Dogs look at the world differently than we do and often have a very simple outlook. If you want to learn more about business, these are some of the lessons your dog is trying to teach you.

Don’t Take Everything So Seriously

To dogs, everything is great. They do not get down about being out of treats. They definitely want one still but they move on very quickly and it isn’t that serious. Sometimes you have to approach business the same way. Yes, there are serious situations you will run into, but there are also some that you take too seriously. Things are usually not as bad as you make them out to be, so focus on the good and do not freak out so much over the bad.

Take a Chance on Something New and Trust Your People

Dogs are mostly happy-go-lucky and are always ready to go on a ride. They do not need to know where they are going, but they are happy to be on the ride. They trust you as their owner, and they know they will be taken care of no matter what. This kind of trust is not always found in the business world. In fact, it is rare. However, if you trust your employees, allow them to take the reigns sometimes and see where it can take the business.

Never Meet a Stranger

A dog never meets a stranger and is instant friends with anyone they meet. If you had this same approach, you would have a much bigger network of people that you could reach in your business. You could have new customers, new clients, new friends, and even new business partners. Approach each new person you meet with the same vibrancy and openness as a dog would and you will be surprised by how much it opens doors for you.

Listen When People Speak to You

This may seem very basic, but dogs are always listening when someone is talking to them. They may not do what is asked, but they are listening. Whenever someone is speaking to you in a business setting, you should focus your attention on them and actively listen to what they are saying.

Trust Your Instincts

Dogs follow their noses, and they also have killer instincts. They do not second guess them. Start trusting yourself more and when you have an instinct about something, more often than not, you will be right if the feeling is strong enough.

Dogs can teach us a lot about life as well as business. Most of these lessons can be used in the business setting as well as in your daily life. Just understanding these basic concepts can help you in your own life.

When it comes to marketing success, the importance of a timely, relevant campaign cannot be overstated enough. You see this all the time with major brands – some big event is going on somewhere in the world like the Super Bowl and marketers rush to be the first to integrate it into their campaigns. As the cheery holiday season rolls around yet again, you’re presented with the perfect opportunity to do exactly that – at least until the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.

But, if you really want to integrate the holidays into your marketing campaign and generate the type of success you deserve, you’ll want to keep a few very important things in mind.

Use Holiday Visuals Whenever Possible

Visuals are always an important part of your marketing collateral, but they become especially so during the holiday season. From roughly November until the Christmas holiday season passes, people are already in a receptive mood for this type of imagery – so filling your marketing materials with holiday-themed colors, Christmas trees, packages, and other items is a great way to make sure you’re noticed.

According to one study, this type of imagery can increase a person’s retention of your messaging by up to 80%. This type of visual element can make your content more likely to be shared up to 40 times more than the average amount.

Look for Local Events You Can Sponsor

If there’s one thing you can essentially guarantee about the holiday season, it’s that calendars will be filled to the brim with holiday events all throughout the month of December. If you really want to attract the attention of that ever-important local market, you should start looking around for local events that you can sponsor. Not only can you help get your brand out there and raise awareness, but even if the event is only slightly related to your product or service you can still make new contacts and generate new leads as a result.

It’s All About Emotion

If there is one key to success regarding holiday marketing, it can all be boiled down to a single word: emotion. The holidays are a naturally emotional time as people get nostalgic for friends, family members, and holiday experiences of years past. It’s also a time where people make decisions emotionally rather than rationally – especially when it comes to purchases. Because of this, you should try to lean into the most emotional factor of your campaigns as much as possible. Focus on cheery words and images that will help people feel good about things like giving back, "paying it forward," and more. This is more likely to trigger an emotional response in your campaign, which will spawn action sooner rather than later.

These are just a few of the core ways you can use the holiday season to your advantage throughout your marketing campaign. Perhaps the most important benefit of the holidays is that you’re working with a built-in ticking clock. Christmas is right around the corner, and no matter what you do, you can’t delay it. People will naturally feel inclined to get those last minute gift purchases in before the big day arrives. If you’ve been playing into the holidays for your entire campaign, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll be on the forefront of their mind.

At its core, content marketing is the idea that by creating and distributing high-quality content that is relevant to your products, your services or your brand, you can more easily attract and even retain people who are interested in what you’re selling. If you sell stereo equipment and write a quality blog post about what to look for in a new home theater, you’re more likely to attract new customers by combining that blog with the sales flyer you sent them in the mail.

Put Information in a Format That People Want To Embrace

When people think of content marketing, they usually think of text. While this is true, it’s important not to neglect the visual element. Case in point: pairing your marketing message up with the right visual image can increase the amount of information a reader will retain dramatically. According to one study, people are only 10% likely to remember information they hear 72 hours after they hear it. If that same information is conveyed in a piece of effective, content marketing with a relevant, attention-grabbing image, that number increases to an incredible 65%!

Color Really Does Mean a Lot

Continuing a discussion about the more visual side of content marketing, one of the most important elements that prove these types of marketing collateral can be more effective than ever all comes down to a single word: color. Another study found that if you’re able to include colored visuals in your content marketing (or any marketing for that matter), you instantly increase someone’s willingness to read and experience that content by an astounding 80%.

People Love Learning

Consider the fact that content marketing can be a lot more than just "marketing" – it can be an educational tool, as well. Take infographics, for example – especially since the advent of social media, infographics with rich, striking visuals have quickly proven to be powerful ways to get your message across. In fact, according to one recent study, an infographic is likely to be shared three TIMES more than any other piece of content on social media. When combined with print marketing, you can help establish your brand as an authority in your field to a much larger audience than imagined.

Content Marketing Creates a Higher Return on Investment

If you needed additional reasons to believe that content marketing is stronger than ever, look no further than one of the most important indicators: ROI. Studies have shown that not only does content marketing cost roughly 60% less than traditional outbound marketing like digital ads, but it can also potentially generate THREE TIMES as many leads!

Stats like these go a long way towards proving that content marketing is an excellent way to take your marketing message and present it to your target audience in a way that they’re more than ready to receive. With the right piece of properly designed collateral, you accomplish everything from increasing awareness of your brand to establishing yourself as the real authority you are….. and everything in between. When you consider that 200 million people now use ad blockers as they browse the internet, high-quality, properly designed content is about to become even more important as time goes on.

Business has quite a few things in common with ballet. Ballet is just as demanding as business, although in other ways. To succeed as a ballet dancer, one must put in a lot of hours of practice. To succeed in business, one must put in a lot of hours of work. For both, plans and dances must be executed in a precise way or the result will not be ideal. Because of these similarities, several things can be learned from ballet that can be applied to business.

1. Create Your Individual Style

Although there are basic components of ballet that ring true, someone who develops their individual style and dares to try new things is someone who will go further than an individual who sticks to only the basic rules. The same is true in business. If you want to succeed, you must stand out from the crowd. Find your own path that is unique to your goals even though you will be utilizing the same building blocks as everyone else.

2. Continue Learning Throughout Your Career

A great ballet dancer never stops learning new techniques and new dances. They simply cannot stop after they have learned only one dance and be successful. In business, this is also true. You must continue to seek out education. Whether it is another degree or simply a class to help you hone in on a skill set, you should never stop trying to learn more and improve your abilities.

3. Practice Makes Perfect

In ballet, perfection is valued and coveted. To reach this kind of perfection, dancers will practice for days, weeks, months, and years on end. They understand that they have to practice to get better and one day achieve that perfection they desire. In business, the same is true. You may have success the first time you do something, but more often than not, you will have to try again. If you believe in a business idea, keep trying and practicing until you get it right. Practice does, after all, make perfect.

4. Know There is a Place and a Role for Everyone

In a ballet dance that involves multiple people, there is a role for everyone to play. Not everyone can be the main dancer, even if they want to be. Someone has to play the supporting role. In business, it is important to understand this because the same is true. Even if you want to be the top dog on a project or in a company, you have to understand that sometimes you simply have to play another important role.

5. Develop and Build Trust

Trust is a huge component of ballet, especially if you are dancing with a partner. If the two partners do not trust each other, it will be apparent, and the dance will not be as beautiful. In business, it is equally as important to trust your partner. Otherwise, you may not give much effort to the project, or you may hold back and cause the business to suffer. Build trust with those you work with and the business will prosper. Choose not to trust, and it can crumble, just like a ballet routine.

There are several parallels between ballet and business. These lessons learned in the ballet circuit are important because they strengthen the dancer. Learn from these lessons, and you will become a stronger individual in the business world as well.

In the world of marketing, there’s a natural instinct to go after certain segments of the population when marketing because those are the ones that spend the most money. That may be good for short-term gains, but any business worth its salt will always be thinking about the future. And regardless of the industry, the future can be summed up in one beautiful little word: millennials.

Commonly defined as anyone between the ages of 18 and 34, or those born in 1982 and up, millennials outnumber baby boomers by roughly a half a million people. They’re the largest generation in the country right now and, make no mistake, the one that the very future of your business will be based on. If you want to court the younger generation and create a solid future for your business, you’ll need to keep a few key things in mind.

Treat Them as Equals

No consumers like to be talked down to or told what to do – but this is especially true with the younger generation. Millennials can absolutely sense "marketing speak," so don’t think that is going to buy you a whole new generation of customers, either. According to one study conducted by Kissmetrics, 89% of millennial buyers trust recommendations from friends and family members MORE than any claim that a brand could make.

Use the same tactics that you’ve been using to win over older generations, but reconfigured for a younger audience. You should still be putting helpful, relevant content that appeals to the people you’re trying to attract out into the world, but keep in mind that what is relevant to a 20-year-old isn’t necessarily the same thing that’s relevant to a 65-year-old. Buyer personas are going to be hugely valuable in this regard to help guarantee your eye is always "on the prize."

You’re a Combination Marketer Now Whether You Like It Or Not

Marketing to specific groups of people has always required putting your efforts to where those people actually are, and millennials are no different. Millennials are nostalgic about direct mail and appreciate personalized invitations and advertising they can hold. Likewise, according to a study conducted by Nielsen, more than 85% of millennials own a smartphone. That means your digital marketing needs to marry with your print marketing for the best way to meet your audience where they’re at.

When used together, print and digital marketing successfully target that coveted younger generation. Think digital with a smartphone-based loyalty rewards program, and connect that program to your direct mail campaign. Social media is another obvious example. Tie your social media efforts with posters, envelopes, and more to create the best of both worlds.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that no business – regardless of what it is – is time-proof. If you focus all of your efforts on one particular age range or demographic, you run the risk of accidentally making yourself irrelevant when that group invariably ages out of the product or service you’re offering.

We often say that children look at the world through fresh eyes. Spending time with a child can give you a new perspective on life and how you view the world. While experience is an excellent teacher, fresh eyes can see the tried and true in a way that you may not have considered before. How can you adapt the fresh eyes concept into your business?

Marketing is successful when it gets prospects and customers to sit up and take notice of your service, brand or product. Some of the best commercials are the ones that make us laugh, cry, or even cringe. The problem is that sometimes marketers rely too much on old ideas and the view of experienced sellers and managers instead of looking for fresh eyes on a campaign. A great marketing campaign gives the audience an emotional connection with the company. Emotions give advertising a memory hook; they get remembered.

Hump Day

Remember the "Hump Day" camel commercials that were on TV about a year ago? Do you remember who they were advertising? If you don’t remember, they were advertising GEICO. GEICO specializes in goofy, funny commercials that are easy to remember due to their tone. Insurance is essentially a tedious business, so getting you to remember advertisements and brand names associated with them takes a memory hook. For GEICO, the gecko is one hook that most Americans can recognize and associate with the company. However, if they overused that hook, audiences would get tired of him. Instead, they come up with quirky commercials and throw in a camel to keep you focused and interested in their brand.

Seeing Your Company with Fresh Eyes

Since you cannot see your own company through fresh eyes, it takes some testing to find out how new people respond to your campaigns. Your assumptions about who is interested in your products and why they are interested may be out of date. Periodic testing of your ideas is crucial to keeping your current customers and finding new ones.

Before you run your marketing campaign, test your assumptions on real people to see how they respond. Real people are the target market you are shooting for, therefore if your tests tell you that you won’t get the results you want, you can save yourself a lot of money. Keep tweaking and testing your campaign with real people until you find the right message, image, and concept that will get the response you want. What made the "Hump Day" commercials so funny? They were silly, harmless, and could never happen in the real world.

Find a Way to Shock Your Audience

Shock your audience with unexpected humor, meaning, or entertainment when you market. Find something that will resonate with them and use it to grab their attention. Obviously, any type of shock will only work for so long because it loses its effect after a time. When was the last time you saw a "Hump Day" commercial, anyway?

If you’re interested in the tech world at all, you’re no doubt aware that Apple recently announced the 2016 MacBook Pro – something the company is calling "the best laptop ever made." Indeed, it’s a unit with a technical specification sheet that can’t help but impress. Objectively, it likely will go down in history as the best laptop the company has released to date. However, some users are suggesting that Apple may be losing the balance between "user experience" and "marketing" in a way that is a bit unfavorable to their end goals.

The 2016 MacBook Pro

The new MacBooks don’t have a standard USB port at all, getting rid of them in favor of the new (and admittedly superior) USB-C. This is a great step towards a much more productive future, but it’s at the expense of the fact that we’re not quite at that future just yet. Case in point: the new iPhone 7 does not have a USB-C port at all. Instead, it uses Apple’s proprietary lightning cable.

This means that if you own both devices and just want to do something as simple as charge your iPhone with your MacBook, you need to purchase an external adapter. To be clear, this is not "the end of the world." The MacBook Pro is still powerful; it can still be used with the brand new iPhone. However, what used to be a one-step process now requires two, as well as a purchase of additional hardware. This is contrary to the popular mantra of "design for the user experience first, marketing second." This is the very same mantra Apple built its reputation on.

What Would Steve Jobs Say About All This?

Never one to shy away from "rattling a few cages," this is one particular case where we don’t actually have to wonder what Steve Jobs may have thought about the steps that modern day Apple just took with the MacBook. He may have actually said it himself, in an interview conducted in the 1990s.

In an interview for the PBS documentary "Triumph of the Nerds," Steve Jobs talked about how important sales and marketing people are to an organization, but how it’s equally important to keep them separate from the product development process. His argument was that all too often, products go from offering a great, easy experience to being "great and easy… to market." Innovation, usability, and the overall experience tend to suffer as a result.

In that interview, Jobs said:
"… the people who make the company more successful are the sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the ‘product people’ get run out of the decision-making forums. The companies forget how to make great products. The product sensibility and product genius that brought them to this monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product vs. a bad product."

Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs didn’t hold an "anti-marketing" stance at all. He supported marketers, and with good reason. Under his watch his own marketing team created some of the most successful campaigns of all time. What Jobs was warning against was the idea that you should always design a product or service for the customer first, and then turn it over to the marketing people to do what they do. When marketing is considered an extension of the product development phase, the positive qualities that brought you to your current position in the first place are often lost.